22 Outlook to Nature 



specific objects and demands greater knowledge 

 of them. It has been the progress of our atti- 

 tude toward nature to add the concrete to the 

 abstract ; and this may be expected to proceed 

 so far that every object of the environment and 

 every detail of our lives will be touched with 

 inspiration. If I cannot catch a note of inspi- 

 ration from the plainest thing that I touch, then 

 to that extent my life is empty and devoid of 

 outlook. 



The great voices appealed to the early Greeks, 

 the thunder, the roaring wind, the roll of the 

 waves, the noise of war ; but we do not know 

 that the shape of the leaf, and the call of the 

 young bird, and the soft gray rain appealed 

 much to them. The Greek lyrics are mostly 

 personal or personifying, and lack any intimate 

 touch with the phases of natural phenomena. 

 As men have come more and more to know 

 the near-at-hand and the real in nature, this 

 knowledge has been interpreted in the poetry ; 

 for poetry always reflects the spirit of the time. 

 All English poetry illustrates this general tend- 

 ency ; but what we are in the habit of calling 



